


at the end of it all

by WhiteLadyoftheRing



Category: Constantine, DCU (Comics), Justice League Dark (Comics), Zatanna (Comics)
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-30
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:55:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27787873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhiteLadyoftheRing/pseuds/WhiteLadyoftheRing
Summary: When Zatanna first meets John Constantine, there is one thing she knows implicitly: at the end of the world, she'll be holding his hand.
Relationships: John Constantine/Zatanna Zatara
Comments: 13
Kudos: 25





	at the end of it all

**Author's Note:**

> Set after the main events of Justice League Dark (2018) #28. Some liberties have been taken with what is still canon following the various reboots.
> 
> [SPOILERS for everything up to and including Justice League Dark (2018) #28. Mentions of N52 and pre-boot.]

**_at the end of it all_ **

Visions and premonitions are fickle things.

Zatanna knows this and tries her hardest not to hedge too many bets on the things she sees and feels that have yet to come to pass; she’s fallen victim to the games of fate too many times to be so naïve. But the first time John Constantine takes her hand – both of them young and reckless and blind to the dangers of the life they’ve chosen – she can’t help one single thought:

At the end of the world, she’ll be holding John’s hand.

* * *

The fire is already blazing when they apparate into Shadowcrest, casting long, flickering shadows onto the wall. This is the home where she grew up; the sofa where she’d curl against her father’s side while he read to her from storybooks and magical tomes alike. So often he’d read to her in his native tongue, and that thought alone makes her heart ache, for she’s long since allowed a dozen dead languages to overwrite the Italian inscribed in her own blood.

It feels like it’s been eons since she’s been home, and the simple act of sinking into the sofa nearly breaks her. She’s filthy, but she doesn’t particularly care; not much seems to matter now that the tears have given way to a numb, incomprehensible exhaustion. She cracks one eye open to see John hanging his coat on the rack near the door, but not before fishing his lighter and a pack of Silk Cuts out of the pocket. It’s simultaneously strange and familiar, seeing him here, so comfortable in her home, like a window into the past. When he meets her gaze, she takes in the lines of his face, the way the years have worn on him. She’ll always think him handsome, but right now he just looks _tired_.

“Zee, I’m –”

“ _Tuhs pu_ ,” she murmurs before he can finish. He shouldn’t need to feel grateful to be alive, nor should he feel guilty. This is what her father wanted; this is what her father planned for all those years ago.

This is her father giving them one more chance.

His mouth is closed, unnaturally so, and he’s giving her that familiar look – that silent reminder that she’s used her magic against him without even realizing. ( _“You’re a dangerous woman to be in bed with.”_ )

“ _Yrros._ ”

He pays no mind to the compulsion, merely tips the top hat – her _father’s_ top hat – onto the top of the rack and continues on. “You look like hell, love.” He tugs at his tie for a moment before pulling it over his head and draping it on the coat rack, too. “You should eat something.”

Her stomach growls at the suggestion, while nausea presses at her throat. “Not hungry.”

He frowns but doesn’t bother to argue. For a stubborn bastard, John has always been immensely patient with her. “All right. Later then, yeah?” He bends to squeeze her hand as he walks past her toward the hall.

* * *

_He’s holding her hand while her father burns away against her other._

_Her right palm still bears the marks from that night: ridges of burnt flesh in the shape of a handprint wrapped around her own – her father’s handprint. Of course, with all the magic of the universe at her fingertips, she could have healed the physical damage, but it’s her_ father _, and she won’t let go of him; his hand on hers for as long as she lives._

_It’s cloaked easily enough, imperceptible to even the most astute observer, but the ache remains._

_(And sometimes she remembers that night in exquisite detail – the rush of being tasked to save the world, the honor to stand alongside the greatest magicians, the tragedy endured – and she feels John’s crushing grip on her opposite hand, as if he too were to tether her to the mortal plane.)_

* * *

She’s staring at her gnarled palm – the cloaking charm dropped in the safety of her own home – when John reappears, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows to reveal a network of tattoos and scars, sigils and wards, all faded and achingly familiar. He’s thinner than the last time he stood there; she can tell by the way he fills the doorway and the prominent shadow of clavicle pressed against skin at the open collar of his shirt. The years have not been kind to him.

“Come along, Zee. You’ll feel miles better once you’re cleaned up.”

She’s doubtful of that, but she’s too tired to argue, and truth be told, it’s a welcome respite to be taken care of; she’s spent far too long holding her friends at arms’ length, intent on shouldering the weight of the cosmos on her own. Her joints ache as she drags herself off the sofa and to the hall, where John herds her toward the bathroom with a hand at the small of her back.

Her voice is high and scratchy from crying. “You’re just trying to get me naked.”

“Any time I get the chance,” he agrees, though there isn’t much heat in it.

In the bathroom, he turns her around and begins unbraiding her hair, fingers gentle as they tug through snarls and grime. She shudders at the sensation of his fingertips against her scalp, and she leans into his touch.

(The thing about John and her is this: he’s a silver-tongued devil, but Zatanna can’t fathom intimacy as deep as the silence she shares with him; the vulnerability forged in his inability to hide from her. The slow drag of his hands through her hair, the warmth of his palms against her bare shoulders, the brush of his knuckles against her sternum as he unfastens her bodice – all betraying more warmth than his words ever could.)

He’s already run the bath – the giant clawfoot tub steaming with the scent of lemon and sage – and he’s quick to pile her clothes in a tidy heap in the corner. (They both know she’ll be conjuring a fresh set instead of attempting to salvage the old.) Naked, she watches as he closes his hand over hers. His lips press against her palm, rough and chapped against the seared skin.

* * *

_Zatanna isn’t sure who reaches for the other first when the world is torn asunder – when Diana isn’t Diana anymore and she’s wielding more magic than should be possible, even for a god – but that doesn’t really matter, does it?_

_Because there, at the end of the world – at the end of_ everything _– John is holding her hand._

_He’s told her that he’d always imagined that he would watch the world fall to pieces from his hometown pub, which is such a John Constantine thing to say. She hasn’t told him that she’d always seen him by her side at the end, as if somehow saying it aloud might speak the apocalypse into existence._

_(She hasn’t told him that she_ wants _to be with him when the earth goes up in flames; that no matter what bad blood has passed between them, there’s no one else she’d rather go down with.)_

* * *

The water is still a little too warm when she settles into the tub, but she sighs and lets it overtake her. She isn’t quite sure where John managed to find bath salts or bubbles (magic, she’ll realize later), but she isn’t going to complain. Not when the knots in her back are finally beginning to relax, and not when John is pouring fragrant water over her head from between his cupped palms.

His hand lingers on her face, thumb tracing the line of her cheekbone. “There you go, love. You’ll be right as rain soon enough.”

“Thank you, John.”

He’s never been good with compliments or gratitude, even from her, even when they were at their best, always deflecting her kind words with a cocky comeback. Of course, all stage magicians know the trick to success is misdirection: an overconfident façade to hide the sad, sad man who believes his humanity died one night in Newcastle along with a little girl named Astra. But now, his eyes meet hers, something he’s done very little of since his brief brush with death.

(The moment hasn’t quite left her yet; the weight of him in her arms, his fingers limp between her own.)

“You rest up,” he says, bending further over the tub to press his lips to her forehead. “Call if you need anything, yeah?”

He’s barely upright before she reaches out to catch his hand. “Please stay.”

* * *

_One thing she hadn’t considered of her little premonition – what would she do if the end came, and John went first?_

_He’s always been a slippery bastard, escaping certain death against all odds again and again and again. She’d never planned for the possibility that maybe she’d be standing at the end of the world clutching John’s lifeless hand within her own._

_(Once in a dream, in another life, he told her that if given the choice between her and the world, he’d choose her every time.)_

* * *

He stays, legs akimbo following a brief, wordless struggle to find a comfortable position in the awkward space of the bathroom floor. He looks ridiculous, but then again, his entire brand is a bizarre mashup of ridiculous and roguishly handsome (his _Mucous Membrane_ days falling firmly on the former end of that particular spectrum); a master of the dark arts propped up against her toilet. Lighting up a cigarette, he takes one long drag from it before folding his hand over hers on the edge of the tub.

(Tomorrow, they’ll have a talk about his smoking habit, and maybe for once her pleas won’t fall on deaf ears. Tomorrow, she’ll decide where to go from here, what she’ll do next in a world without the Upside-Down Man, a world with no hope of saving her father. Tomorrow, she and John will finally address that thing they’ve been dancing around for so many years: the question of what they _are_ to one another. Tomorrow … it can all wait until tomorrow.)

She smiles faintly in spite of everything, committing this moment to memory: the calm and silence, the scent of lemon and sage steaming from the bath, the stretch of John’s fingers interlaced with her own.

His voice is quiet, even in the relative silence. “What are you thinking about, love?”

“Nothing,” she says, closing her eyes and tipping her head back against the rim of the tub. “Nothing.”

* * *

Here, at the end of it all, John is holding her hand.

_Fin._


End file.
